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Mindy telling me  about the books  she read in 1998.

General Fiction:	In terms of General Fiction, I really like Barbara Kingsolver and would love to see more of her novels. Her first three books were introduced to me by Rosemary and Bonnie who both recommended them to me.  I loved Animal Dreams, but all three of her first novels were wonderful and warm. The Poisonwood Bible got a lot of attention because it was picked by Oprah for her bookclub, but I didn't like it as much even though it was very powerful.  She has a new one out now that I still haven't read.
	Okay, I recently re-discovered that you can rarely go wrong with a "classic".  I picked up To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee while visiting Book People in Austin (great store!) and was blown away by this story.  Still as moving today as when it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961, if you haven't read it, get thee to a bookstore and buy it!  I get requests for this all the time at Barnes and Noble as kids have to read it for school.  The best request I heard was for "How to Kill a Mockingbird"!...
	Anna Quindlan is a writer who I always enjoyed -- I'd look in the newspaper for her column and was always disappointed if it wasn't there.  She was syndicated in my local paper from the NY Times and I found her viewpoints interesting and usually similar to my own -- although not always.  I was sorry to hear that she was leaving the newspaper world to write fiction -- I didn't think I'll like her as much as a novelist.  Well, I was wrong -- I read her book One True Thing a while ago and found it to be a sad and riveting story.  Made me wonder what I would do in a similar situation, as the dutiful daughter.  Recently read Object Lessons and really liked that one -- even better than One True Thing.  I finally succumbed to the lure of Black And Blue and found it to be wonderful.  Well crafted and riveting.  Also if you are interested in her older work, she has a collection of her columns out called Thinking Out Loud.  I am so happy that she now has a semi-regular column on the last page of the magazine Newsweek, although I am always annoyed when I turn to the back in anticipation only to find George Will there!  Yuk!
	Anne Lamott as written a wonderful and somewhat sad book, Rosie, which Mindy recommended and I bought in San Francisco when I was there. Crooked Little Heart, the sequel to Rosie, is even more wonderfully written, exploring the trials of finding out who you are as a young person.   I recently read Joe Jones which is one of her older books.  Still I was struck by her character writing.  It was very enjoyable.
	Amy Tan never fails to write an engaging tale, and The Hundred Secret Senses lives up to her other books, and even surpasses them.  The Bonesetter's Daughter is a fascinating book, ultimately telling how freeing the truth about the past can be (a subject close to my heart).  Ruth, a ghostwriter, struggles with her life situation -- how does she feel about her relationships?  Her mother, LuLing, is aging and showing signs of alzhimer's disease.  While cleaning her mother's home, she discovers her mother's written (in Chinese) account of her life.  The story gives her insight into her mother's obsession with 'precious auntie' who it turns out held the secrets to everyone's past.  Once the family secrets are out, Ruth finds the strength to understand and forgive her mother and be true to what she wants as well.  Although I found The Bonesetter's Daughter slow in the beginning, once the story centered on LuLing's life, the story became much more interesting to me and the rest was great.   Recently I read Saving Fish From Drowning and liked it very much.
	I have also read a few of Jane Smiley and especially liked Moo and A Thousand Acres.  I have never lived in the country and found that I couldn't get into Barn Blind but I did like Duplicate Keys, although as a mystery, I found it a bit lacking.  If I can figure it out quite early, it's a little too obvious.
	For a great bunch of books (introduced to me by the Billing Dept. gals at Metro -- who raved about them) try Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series.  She is still writing them and we are all hoping for more soon.  Once you're hooked... you'll want to read them all and visit her web page to check out the excerpts from the new books... very addicting.
	Always enjoyable are the works of Alice Hoffman.  Her characters are a twist on the norm and I especially liked Practical Magic.  Recently I finished Second Nature which was a wonderful story in which a woman takes a "wolf" man from an insane asylum home with her.  It was a beautifully crafted story and I just wanted it to last forever.  Her books are interesting and a little mystical.
	A woman who creates some very memorable characters would have to be Marge Piercy.  I really didn't like the character of Connie from Woman On The Edge of Time, but I must admit that she stuck around in my head a lot longer than some others.  Her work seems to be uneven and sometimes it's just not worth it (Small Changes) but I recently read Three Women which I really enjoyed, and liked Summer People and The Longings of Women.
	Memoirs of a Geisha was a lush, literary and slorpable read.  I learned a lot and lost myself in Arthur Golden's tale of Sayuri's life in the Gion in pre-war Japan.
	Maeve Binchy never fails to enchant with her gentle stories. Tara Road was no exception, and actually along with The Evening Class is one of her few books set in current times.  Although the book had that awful "Oprah's Book Club" embossed on it, it was still a delicious read.  I read Scarlet Feather too, but it was a little less than I was hoping for.
	Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout is a rich tale of a mother and daughter in small town Shirley Falls.  They are at a crossroads in their lives as Amy begins to discover her sexuality and Isabelle confronts the decisions she's made in her life.
	The Red Tent by Anita Diamant was another Mindy recommendation -- and a great one.  The story of Dinah, daughter of Jacob, it tells the story of the women in the red tent,  the power of their stories and the traditions they pass on to Dinah, their only daughter.  Based on the biblical story, this is a story of women's power in the ancient world.  This books ascension onto the bestseller lists is a testament to the power of 'word of mouth' in the book industry.
	Tracy Chevalier's Girl With a Pearl Earring was an amazing story of Griet, a sixteen year old girl who finds employment when her family falls on hard times cleaning the studio of the painter Vermeer.  Set in 17th century Delft, Holland, the novel evokes time and place so well that you are amazed to be in the 21st century when you put it down (which is hard to do).
	Many years ago I read 84, Charing Cross Road after watching the movie with my then roomate, Morgan.  I loved it.  Just last fall I read The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street and Q's Legacy also by Helene Hanff and they were just as captivating.  Her tales of book adoraton are wonderful and the letters in 84, Charing Cross Road are whimsical and witty.  The two books round out her story both before and after 84.  They were a perfect find at a bookstore on Saltspring Island and a perfect read on a grey rainy day.
	I'm still enjoying the work of Anita Shreve.  The Last Time They Met was very well written and the end was startling.  I admit that when I got to the last page all I could think was "What?!?!?!  No!"  In the reading group pages at the back of the book, it asks, "what in the story might have let you to believe that the ending would be the way it was?" And I remember thinking NOTHING!!  Thinking back on it later however, I realized that there was something that I had thought pecular that might have tipped me off if I had know to be looking for clues.  Otherwise a good story of life lived and regrets.  I recently read A Wedding in December and was reminded how enjoyable her writing is.  I was hooked by her first book, The Pilot's Wife.
	Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquival was a book that I'd been meaning to read for a while -- Denise loaned it to me, so in spite of the backlog, I tackled it.  It was an interesting read, I felt so bad for Tita and the way she was treated by her mother.  Yet, ulitmately she was the powerful one.  Written in the magical realism style popular with some, it's not usually to my taste, but I couldn't stop rooting for Tita to find happiness.  I hoped she would find it another way, but the ending was true to the story.
	The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold is a wistful, sad yet utlimately hopeful book.  Susy is a young girl, terribly raped and murdered by a neighbour in her supposedly safe little town. From heaven she traces the lives of family and freinds and her killer.  She wishes she had her life to live but finds heaven is just what she wanted too.  Still, she cannot stop herself from watching and wondering what her life would have been.
	The Sweet Potato Queen's Guide to Love.  Just the title makes you want to smile. Jill Connor Brown has lots of advise on life, men and getting through each with the help of your friends.  Flavoured with a southern tangy sweetness, this book is just the thing to get good laughs going.  I heard her on NPR and loved what I heard then, smiled through the book and know there's two more out there.
	The Ivory Swing by Janette Turner Hospital is an intricate tale of a couple and their children who move to India on the husband's sabbatical.  The problems in their marriage are amplified by the isolation of their setting in a culture so different from their own.  As they 'break dharma', according to their host, all things come to a head.  Written in 1982, this book was recommended to me by my Grandmollie and it took a long time to find.  Gotta love old bookstores...
	In The Curious Tale of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, we are introduced to Christopher, a 16 year old with Asperger's Syndrome, a high functioning form of Autism.  Christopher discovers a neighbour's dog, dead, killed with the gardening fork.  He decides to write a book of his detecting of who killed Wellington, the dog.  Along the way he makes some discoveries about his mother's death and his father that are very upsetting.  But he learns how to cope with these things by making a plan -- to go to London.  Christopher determines that he can no longer live with his father, but must go to London on his own  -- no small undertaking.
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Canadian fiction:	A recent favorite of mine in Canadian fiction is Gail Anderson-Dargatz whose book The Cure for Death by Lightning is a terrific story.  Layered and intriguing it was hard to put down and I was sorry when I finished it.  Her second book, A Recipe For Bees was even better -- I think part of the reason I loved it so much was that the setting was Vancouver Island, where I used to live.  Made me a little homesick.  I recently read her first book The Miss Hereford Stories, and it was wonderful.
	Audrey Thomas, whose book Coming Down from Wa (short listed for the 1996 Governor General's Award) really impressed me with this story.  It had the desert and Africa dancing in my brain for days, even in the middle of a rainy Vancouver fall! I've read a few others, but none affected me as much as this one.  I saw her at the Festival of the Written Arts in Sechelt this summer.  I really enjoyed meeting her and hearing her read.
	An author I had been meaning to read for a long time is Wayson Choy.  His book The Jade Peony takes place in Vancouver's Chinatown beginning in the depression and is really three stories told be three children in the same family.  It's beautifully written and really evoked the chill of a Vancouver December, even in Houston in August! I read the companion book, All That Matters, a few years later and found it to be interesting as the story was told from the prespective on another character in the first book.
	I must mention Carol Shields as she is a wonderful author as well.  I really liked Republic of Love and this year got Larry's Party and loved that as well.  She won a Governor General's Award for The Stone Diaries in 1994(?) which I liked a little but didn't love.  She's one of Mindy's favorite authors and I met her at a preview reading of Larry's Party in 1997.  It was wonderful to hear her read and be able to ask her about the characters she creates.  She lived in Winnipeg, Manitoba (also home of my friends Leah & Ross) before moving to Victoria, BC. Her book Unless is a book that really rocked me.  Shields tells of Reta: an author, wife and mother of three daughters.  While working on her latest novel her daughter leaves her boyfriend, drops out of college and starts begging on a Toronto street corner with a sign 'GOODNESS' around her neck.  She won't talk to her family and won't come home.  They all struggle to make sense of her behavior.  Reta feels that Norah is reacting to the fact that women are dismissed in our society and worries that they'll never know what's going on.  The ending was seeded early in the story and it's only at the climax of the novel that you see how it all fits together.  A wonderful story.  Unfortunately, it was her last book before succumbing to breast cancer.  She will be missed by readers everywhere.
	I read Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood which I liked a lot but not as much as The Robber Bride and The Handmaid's Tale which freaked me out.  The Robber Bride was and excellent story and I really like the women, in spite of their flaws, or perhaps because of them.  I have read some of her older work, including The Edible Woman (weird, I thought) but it's been so long that I can't really remember my impressions.  With a return to writing on the future Atwood's book Oryx and Crake tells of a high-tech genetic future gone horribly wrong.  The way Atwood is able to seemlessly integrate stories and advances of today and warp them to suit her dystopia is striking and frightening.  This time it is the disparity between rich and poor -- the rich living in compounds where the "stars" are geneticists and other scientists who come up with new procedures for prolonging life and youth as well as new animals and plants through gene splicing.  The poor live in the 'pleeblands' where they scrape to survive.  Along comes Crake, a genius and Jimmy's friend.  Crake goes to the best college and is hired by the best company and given free reign.  The whole story is told through the memories of 'Snowman' who is who Jimmy becomes when he is looking after the Crakers after the catastrophe.  The ending is ambiguous -- what does Snowman do to protect his Crakers from those people who survived the massive virus?  As I read the book, I realized that I had heard her read an excerpt from it when I saw her in 2000 (?) with my friend Lynnda.
	Have you heard of Nick Bantock's Griffin and Sabine books?  You read the letters and postcards (letters in envelopes and everything) and that's how the story is told.  I love these, and the way they let a story be told in an artistic way.  Your senses are filled when reading a Bantock book and I loved the Venecian's Wife just as much.  I finally got the time to sit down and savor The Forgetting Room.  It's not as graphically heavy as the previous books but I enjoyed the story more this time.  His books allow you to experience the story on more than one level and with more than just the words.  They truly are a sensory delight and his partner in Byzantium Books is Barbara Hodgson, who also used the same rich style to write her book, The Tattooed Map, another wonderful book.  I look forward to more by these author/artists.  Nick Bantock, incidentally, lives close to my old hometown of Vancouver, on an island just off the coast of West Vancouver.  I got a chance to meet him at an author signing in Bollum's books and brought all my books to get his signature.  That's when I found out about his partnership with Barbara Hodgson, when I asked if he'd seen her work as she was doing similar things!  Oooooop!
	A Good House by Bonnie Burnard was a lovely gentle story about the lives of a family in southern Ontario over the course of 50 or so years.  It won the Giller Prize in 1999 and I got to hear the author read from it at the Festival of the Written Arts in Sechelt in August 2000.  It recently became available in the US and is getting good reviews here too.
	While in Vancouver in Feb 2002, I finally got around to reading Fall On Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald.  Although this had been picked for an Oprah read some time before, I'd actually had it in my backlog since we lived in Vancouver!  Shame on me for not getting more into that backlog!  Set in Nova Scotia at the turn of the century, the novel follows the Piper family through many trials and tribulations.  The book was well, amazing and you just couldn't figure out what would happen to this family next.  What a story!
	Rush Home Road by Lori Lansens, is a book I heard about on Hot Type a show we used to get here on Newsworld International (of CBC).  I was lucky to see this one and was very intrigued.  The story about an old woman, Addy Shadd, who takes in a neighbour's child, Sharla, for the summer is wonderful.  Addy takes in poor unloved (and abandoned) Sharla and realizes how lonely she was before Sharla came.  She shows Sharla the love she so desperately needs and thinks back on the life she lived as she wonders who will take care of Sharla when she's gone.  A lovely tale of redemption and overcoming tragedy.  Stayed up half the night with this one!
	Chorus of Mushrooms by Hiromi Goto is a book I had been searching for for quite a while after I read a short story of hers that I really liked.  It's a very non-linear tale of Muriel (Murasaki) and her grandmother, Obachan.  Muriel tells the stories of her life growing up on an Alberta mushroom farm with her parents who try to be very Canadian and her Obachan who will speak only Japanese.  An interesting tale with a mystical element ~ the way Murasaki and Obachan can 'hear' each other even though they do not speak the same language.  I liked it a lot.
	Monkey Beach by Eden Robinson is an amazing book.  Written from Lisamarie's perspective, it is a tale of her family who live in Kitamaat village on the northern coast of British Columbia.  Having grown up in BC and gone to summer camp along the coast, I found her imagry roused a viscreal memory of the wilderness.  At the start of her story, Lisa's brother Jimmy is deckhand on a fishing boat for the first time when it goes missing.  She knows the situation is dire when the little man who warns her of death wakes her that morning.  As the days progress, Lisa remembers growing up in Kitamaat with her brother and family.  The ghosts she sees are explained to her by her grandmother, Ma-ma-oo, but not discussed with her mother who, according to Ma-ma-oo sees them as well.  After witnessing the deaths of her beloved Uncle Mick and later Ma-ma-oo, she sinks into the depression and alcoholism common to her community.  But she comes back from Vancouver for the funeral of a friend and makes her peace with her family.  When the fishing boat is found, Lisa takes her speedboat to meet her parents in Namu, stopping along the way at Monkey Beach, where she hopes to find some answers.  Shortlisted for both the Govenor General's Award and the Giller prize, it's a spellbinding novel.  Now that I know (from link above) that the novel sprang from a short story in her book, Traplines, I'll have to get that one too.  Eden Robinson is definitely a writer from whom I would like to hear more.
	Hey Nostradamus! by Douglas Coupland brought me back to 'home' -- Vancouver.  He is so able to evoke the feel of Vancouver and being of a similar age, his writing of high school is similar to my memory of it.  So the book takes me home but to a story that never actually happened.  It would seem likely that Coupland was inspired by the events at Columbine and other US high schools where shootings happened but he took that setting and ran with it.  Four narrators tell the story of what happened after the (fictional) shooting at a high school in the late 1980's in North Vancouver.  Cheryl starts the story before the shooting and her narrative ends with her death in the cafeteria of the school just as Jason comes to find her and kills one of the attackers.  Jason picks up the story and tells of what happened and how he never really got over it in letters to his two nephews.  Heather, the woman who falls for Jason tells her story after Jason disappears and she's contacted by a psychic who gives her messages.  After that Jason's father tells his tale and we see how they are all connected to that fateful day of the school shooting.  His books Souvenir of Canada (1 & 2) were a non-fiction nostalgic look back at the Canada of my youth.  I am currently reading his latest novel, The Gum Thief
	Mary Lawson's book Crow Lake was a delicous read, and another Mindy recommendation.  Richly populated by engaging and interesting characters, Mrs. Stanovich is a favorite of the monor characters.  The story centers on Kate, orphaned as a young girl, who grows up to be a biologist and professor in the footsteps of her beloved older brother Matt.  Matt is the one who inspired her learning and academic prowess.  However, there is tragedy apart from the death of her parents.  Kate and her little sister Bo are raised by Matt and Luke (the eldest), who although they do their best to keep the family together are woefully unprepared for parenthood.  When tragedy strikes down the lane at the Pye household, the family is sucked into the unfloding events and will never be the same.  Kate lives her life, both physically and emotionally as far away from Crow Lake (in the north of Ontario) and her siblings as she can get.  She cannot face Matt.  When her nephew's graduation invitation arrives she is unprepared for the emotions she will feel even as she tries to deal with her personal relationship with Daniel, another prof at her college.  Now I loved this book althought Lynnda was not as impressed.  Recommended to me by Mindy I would encourage anyone to pick this one up.  But be aware: it's very hard to put down.
	To check out Canadian Fiction titles that have won awards in Canada, have a look at Canada's National Literary Awards for a listing of the Awards and the winners. There's also the Canada Reads program on CBC Radio.  Each of five titles is championed by a panelist chosen by the producers of the show.  The panelists are passionate readers picked from various areas of the country.
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Science Fiction:	If you are into Science Fiction, please don't miss Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.  It is an amazing story and you'll love it.  There are a couple of follow-ups to the story but it's not really a series.  They were also good but I have to say that I never got into his other series.  I'll have to try them again -- I am an uneven reader of SciFi -- Joe is much more into it than I am, and is always finding a new great author. I loaned it to a friend at NAM and both she and her son loved it.  Card has now written more books in the Ender series: Ender's Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon and Shadow Puppets.  Joe read them first (although I have yet to find the time, I look forward to it) and loved the first one.
	Mary Doria Russell's book The Sparrow was an enthralling read -- science fiction with a strong mystery running through it.  We read the story in two time frames, the present (2060) and the past as gradually the story of the ill-fated mission to a new planet unfolds, told by the only survivor.  Wow, it really blew my socks off -- the sequel, Children of God is another book in my backlog, but Joe has already read it.
	Here's one that languished in the backlog since we moved here from Vancouver in 1998.  It was one that'd I'd bought because I couldn't believe that I'd never read it -- 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke.  Even though it's been decades since it was written and the changes in the meantime were sometimes off the changes depicted in this future, the story is riveting.  And mind bending.  It's one of those books that you have to let percolate through your brain for days afterward.  Wow!
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Fantasy:	Well of course, Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien.  I started the trilogy before the movies came out, but didn't finish the first book before seeing the movie.  It didn't really matter -- it was just as amazing as the first time and actually even better.  There was so much I'd forgotten!  This is a classic for  a reason -- the battle of good over evil, the strength of the bonds of friendship and so much more. My friend Lynnda has read it at least a dozen times and I am still amazed by that!  Joe and I were actually reading LOtR concurrently at one point!  We all agree that all the movies rocked.
	I absolutely adored anything by Guy Gavriel Kay.  His series, The Fionavar Tapestry, made up of The Summer Tree, The Wandering Fire and The Darkest Road, was the first fantasy that I read (and during final exams too!  Thanks Morgan!) and I have been a fan ever since.  I really enjoyed hearing him read at the Vancouver International Writer's and Reader's Festival in 1995.  His novels since have yet to disappoint.  They are more involved and literary than his first, but again extremely readable and I loved every word of them.  I recently re-read The Fionavar Tapestry after loaning it to my neighbour and having her rave for it.  I found it to be very enjoyable but not as amazing as I had originally thought. Still a great read though.  I guess after re-reading Lord of the Rings, it suffered a little in comparison -- they are similar books with overarching themes.  I had found that some of his more recent writing beginning with The Lions of Al-Rassan not as captivating so haven't read any of his books lately.
	I also really like Mercedes Lackey for Fantasy, they are a real "slorp" read (you know, one of those books that you just "slorp" down in one sitting if possible), I have since recommended them to a lot of my friends.  I especially like the ones that take place in Valdemar -- starting with the Arrows books.  Joe just recently started reading these and devoured them with lots of enthusiasm.  She has written few of them recently, but this is one of a few series that I go back and re-read many times.  They're so satisfying.
	Joe is the one who introduced me to the Pern books by Anne McCaffrey. She also has really enjoyable and "slorpable" books, and the characters are likable and the stories fun.
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Mystery:	If you like mysteries, I can't recommend Dick Francis highly enough.  I was introduced to him by friends at the UVic Bookstore and have been addicted since.  I was used to reading mysteries with the same central character in all the books (Sue Grafton, Sara Paretsky etc. who all have strong female lead characters) and didn't think that I would like a series where the protagonist is different each time but they are all as wonderful as the first.  Always a good "slorp" read (you know, one of those books that you just "slorp" down in one sitting if possible).
	Another author who I like is Julie Smith whose stories take place in New Orleans (another series is set in San Francisco but is not quite as complex) and have titles like New Orleans Mourning and so on.  They are a great read and have my favorite mystery quality -- they are a slorpable read.  Linda Barnes is another good mystery author.
	I have to mention Deja Dead by Kathy Reichs as one I was on the lookout for because at the time she was a new mystery writer and all the press that I had read on this one promised a great story.  It didn't disappoint and I was up until 4 am unable to sleep until I finished!  Also, it takes place in Montreal not long before the referendum of 1996 and it's interesting to read the main character's assessment of the political situation as she is new to Canada and Quebec (as is the author). July 1, 2004 Lynnda Joe Lynne and I attended an author luncheon with Kathy Reichs as the guest of honor. Murder by the Book sponsors many of these events and is a great mystery bookstore introduced to me by Lynne.  She was a very engaging speaker and I'm looking forward to her latest books. I have continued to be a fan of her work, and still enjoy the character and stories.  I most recently read Break No Bones and was again enthralled.
	I recently read my first Anne Perry and although I thought I wouldn't like Victorian crime, it was really good.  The only hard part now is finding titles on the backlist, as I read The Cater Street Hangman, the first of the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series.  Rosemary said if I liked those, I would really enjoy the William Monk series.  Unfortunately she was right and now I have lots of them to read too -- like my book backlog needs any help!
	Sara Paretsky is the author of the V.I. Warshawski mysteries, a series about a tough female Chicago detective.  VI is the daughter of a Chicago cop and an Italian mother who grew up on the tough side of town and now runs her own detective agency.  She is impulsive and often takes on cases out of sheer perversity.  An engaging character, Vic is not without her flaws but a keen sense of  honor and justice keep her on track.  I can't believe I never had her listed on this page, since I've read and enjoyed her books since introduced to them by Sarah at the U.Vic Bookstore, but there was a long gap between books (five years and I certainly missed them) so that might have been why she slipped through the cracks.  Her book Hard Time is really good and engaging read, this one is one of Paretsky's best. She continues to write engaging mysteries, and I look forward to the next one.  She has a new book coming out in January 2008 which appears to not be a VI mystery -- I look forward to checking it out.
	In 2003, my friend Lynne introduced me to Nevada Barr. Track of the Cat was her first book and came highly recommended by her.  Boy was she right -- it's engaging, fun and a good 'slorp' of a read.  It's the first of many in the series with Anna as a park ranger.  I look forward the the next one. Barr's second book, A Superior Death, perfectly evoked the cold of Lake Superior in the summer.  A strong and interesting cast of characters populate this one -- a deliciously cool read. I read Ill Wind in May 2003.  The protrayal of the setting is so true to life, you feel you are really there, in this case at Mesa Verde.  Joe and I visited the site on our Vegas Baby trip in Summer 2002 so the setting was fresh in our minds.  I have continued to read her books as each new story is published and enjoy them very much.  Anna has developed into a very interesting character, flaws and all, and the development of her relationships are interesting to track as well.  I look forward to Winter Study, the latest which will come out in April 2008.
	Alexander McCall Smith is the author of the lovely book collection The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency.  Although no murders are committed in any of the books, Mme Precious Ramotswe uses her detective agency to help others unravel mysteries.  Set in Gabarone, Botswana the books are evocative of Africa and the apparent slower life there.  With her assistant, Mma Makutsi and later her fiancee Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni and new location at the Tlokweng Speedy Motors Mma Ramotswe always finds the correct way of dealing with her cases and clients.
	I recently started reading Janet Evanovich's mysteries.  One for the Money is the first and both Joe and I have been enjoying the antics of Trenton NJ's luckiest bounty hunter, Stephanie Plum.  Her stories of the characters that populate Stephanies, from Grandma Mazur to Ranger and Joe Morelli are fun.   They can get a little tiresome after a while -- but then we have been reading them pretty much non-stop from one to nine.  Lean Mean Thirteen is out in hard cover, and I may need a break from them before I get that far.
	Although his tenth novel in the Inspector Banks series, In a Dry Season, was my introduction to Peter Robinson's mysteries, it certainly got me hooked. What an auspicous beginning -- it had me hooked.  Cathy gave me this one when we were visiting Victoria and I loved it.  The book takes place in present day but with flashbacks to the time of the murder in WWII rural England.  Banks is grappling with a vindictive boss, estrangement from his children and living alone after years of marriage.  Add to this a forty year old murder that was only discovered when a dammed lake dried up and you have a spellbinding tale.  Nominated for an Edgar award, the novel won the Anthony Award in 2000.  I have been a huge fan of his books ever since and I look forward to reading the next one.
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Suspense:	I really like Barbara Vine but she is one twisted gal.  I picked up Asta's Book (published in the US as Anna's Book) purely by accident and found it really interesting.  'Course, I have always been one of those people who would like to read another's diary if I could only bring myself to do it. Asta's Book allowed me to do this without it mattering, and from then on I was hooked.   Barbara Vine really knows how to build the suspense.  In A Fatal Inversion she is a master at keeping the truth of who's bones are buried in the yard until the end, and all along, I really didn't know.  This book is the winner of the 1987 Gold Dagger Award and one of her best.  I also really liked A Dark Adapted Eye.  Barbara Vine is a pseudonym for Ruth Rendell, whose novels I don't enjoy as much.  I'd love to ask her one day why the styles are so different.
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Children/Youth:	In the realm of Young Adult Fiction, I have to say that one of my favorite authors (thanks to the camp counselor who read to us) is Madeleine L'Engle and the Wrinkle in Time series.  There's a great web site devoted to her (by a very devoted fan) called Tesseract.  It contains information on all her works.
	Another of my favorites is The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis.  I was introduced to these by another camp counselor who read The Voyage of the Dawn Treader to my cabin one summer.  As an adult I still found the stories to be somewhat comforting, although The Last Battle I now find to be less to my taste -- the stereotypes are something that I dislike.  Still the adventure in the previous stories are a wonderful fantasy for young minds.
	Enid Blyton was one of my favorite authors as a youngster -- I'd spend all my allowance money at the local bookstore in Kerrisdale to buy her adventure and mystery stories.  The Famous Five and others were excellent company and the adventures whiled away many a rainy Vancouver day.
	The Harry Potter books by J. K. Rowling are just as wonderful as everyone says.  Of course since they are written for children, characters are either very good or very bad (evil).  But that doesn't distract from the wonderful imagination that it took to write these characters and the situations in which they find themselves.  If you have read and liked these, have a look at the Arrows of the Queen books (part of the Valdemar series, see the fantasy section, above) by Mercedes Lackey.  When we were in Newfoundland in 2000 we got the fourth  Harry Potter book, The Goblet of Fire in a Canadian edition, the books look different than the US editions and have less pictures.   I also found that they did less editing of the original English idioms.  Our fifth one is also a Canadian edition, bought when in Vancouver for my brother's wedding. Of course, the series is now complete.  It's sad to think that there won't be any more Harry Potter release parties -- I worked the last one at my Barnes and Noble and had a blast. I have to say that the last book really tied in elements from all the previous books and was amazing.  I cannot recommend these highly enough.
	Margaret Craven's book I Heard the Owl Call My Name is a book I read in elementary school and really enjoyed.  It has stuck with me since sixth grade and so when I saw it in Jan. 2003, I had to pick it up to see if it lived up to the memory.  It did.  It is a gentle tale of a vicar who is posted to the village of Kingcome to minister to the Kwacutl people there.  It is evocative of (my image) of northern coastal British Columbia (having been around a lot of BC but not the northern coast).
	Animal Farm by George Orwell is one of those books we are often compelled to read in high school.  My class got 1984 (time to re-read it given the rhetoric of the current government here in the US) so I'd never read Animal Farm.  In acknowledgment of Banned Books week (though this one is not on the 100 most challenged books list), I picked it up and read it in October of 2002.  A scathing indictment of communism as practiced in the former Soviet Union, this is one scary book.  It is in the same vein as 1984 and Brave New World.
	All of a Kind Family is the first of a series of books by Sydney Taylor that I remember reading as a child.  I had been trying to remember the name of the books for a while and finally did an internet search.  Voila!  The story, written in 1959, takes place in 1912 New York.  Five sisters: Ella, Henny, Sarah, Charlotte and Gertie live with Mama and Papa on New York's East Side in a building where they have a whole floor.  They learn about housekeeping, go with Mama to the market, suffer throught Scarlet Fever and a hot New York summer and make friends with their new Library Lady.  A quaint set of stories that was my first introduction to the celebrations of Judaism.  I seem to recall asking my mother why we didn't get to celebrate with a Seder!  Her books were so adept at bringing Jewish traditions to the mainstream that she's been memorialised with an award, the Sydney Taylor Book Award.
	Gathering Blue is young adult fiction by Lois Lowry and the second book I have read by her, The Giver being the first.  Both are highly interesting tales of the future and how society deals with 'problems'.  Both stayed with me for quite a while.  In Gathering Blue, Kira, a recently orphaned girl with a deformed leg has a special gift for embriodery, taught her by her mother but exceeding her mother's ability.  When she returns to the village after mourning her mother's death, she faces being turned out to 'the beasts' that live outside it for being useless due to her leg.  She is taken before the council of elders (12 men) where she is given a new job, to repair the robe worn by the Singer.  The singer tells the story of her people as discribed in carvings on his walking stick and the stiches on his robe.  While learning her craft and repairing the robe, Kira meets Thomas, the carver and eventually a tyke called Jo who will become the next singer.  She also comes to discover that the three artists are not truly free and that there may be more going on than she can comprehend yet. Are there really beasts out there?  And why can she not find a blue plant she knows exists 'yonder' to dye her threads?  Her little friend Matt, together with the dyer Annabella help her to understand her place the world in which she lives and is held.  I think I shall pass these along to a niece in the future.  Lois Lowry's latest book, The Messenger, ties the first two together.  It is also an amazing story -- I loved it and again it really stuck with me.
	Lastly, I can't leave this section without mentioning The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgeson Burnett. It was re-issued in an anniversary edition when I worked in receiving at the UVic Bookstore and never got to the shelf. Again, it was read to me as a child (by my grade 4 teacher, Mrs. McGregor) and I loved it then and love it still.  Never underestimate the power of reading to a child.
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Non Fiction:	This Marvelous, Terrible Place by Yva Momatiuk & John Eastcott is a wonderful book about Newfoundland and it's people.  The photography is excellent and the stories are Newfoundlanders own recollections of the province.  We read it at our B&B in Cow Head, NF and I was enchanted -- so we found one to take home with us.
	Katherine Graham's autobiography, Personal History was a wonderful book.  Although the beginning is a little slow, I got really interested when she was thrust into the position of publisher of the Washington Post.  She was at the helm for the Pentagon Papers (I need to find out more about that scandal too) and Watergate.  It's so interesting reading about her finding out all she can do after years of feeling timid.  I was terribly upset by her death in 2001.
	Douglas Coupland's new book, City of Glass is an awesome book for anyone who lives or has lived in Vancouver.  It explains everything that outsiders just don't 'get'.  With photos and short excerpts about everything from trees to Seattle to the quality of light in Vancouver it had me alternately roaring with laughter and nodding and thinking "yeah, that's exactly it!
	Souvenir of Canada by Douglas Coupland is a wonderful book of Canadian in-jokes.  Little bites of collective memory and Coupland's witty observations combined with pictures that have you looking for the familiar make tasty morsels.  The "oh, yeah!" factor is high, especially for anyone close to his age (a little older than me -- I must say the whole 'cheemo' thing passed me by, to me they're just perogies!).  For a Canadian living in the US (far from the Canadian border and any Canadian media influence except via internet) it's a treasure.  I got it for Mindy for her birthday and she loves it too.
	Denise Chong answers a question that many people must have wondered: what ever happened to The Girl In The Picture?  The famous picture of Kim Phuc running down a road after being napalmed in Viet Nam was seen around the world.  Now Kim tells her story to Denise and we find our what happened after.  Not always happy, the story takes us from Viet Nam to Cuba to Canada.  Her first novel, The Concubine's Children was the story of her mother's life.  I read this book some time ago and found it riveting as well.  I saw her at the Festival of the Written Arts in August 2000, she gave a wonderful reading and was very well spoken and likeable.
	Anthony Bourdain struck again with his book, A Cook's Tour, written in combination with his Food Network show.  It's a great peek inside his mind (again -- Kitchen Confidential was also great) and the show.  Loved the 'reasons not to do a tv show"!  We saw him at Sur La Table in Houston and he was interesting and as irreverent as you would expect.  As he wrote in my book, "Eat without Fear!"  I also read his book Typhoid Mary, which told the story of the cook who became nortorious as being the carrier of typhoid -- a book told with sympathy by
	Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich was an amazing first person account of working in the real world of welfare reform.  The author, a frequent contributor to magazines like Time, Harper's and the New Republic, went to three seperate cities and got a job in the kind of minimum wage jobs that people toil at everyday to see if she could make ends meet on them.  Her observations of the conditions of this life and her co-workers struggles are scary and sad.  Is this the best America can do?  I also read her book Bait and Switch, which failed to live up to the prevous book.
	All the President's Men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward is also a book that I'd been meaning to read for quite some time, although it never languished in the backlog.  The Watergate scandal happened when I was eight, a little too young to be aware of it, so this is a perfect read to find out what it was all about.  I finally bought the book and then had to fight with Joe over who would read it first!  We both really liked it, it makes a great comeback to anyone who remarks that the Clinton administration was the most corrupt ever!  ;-)  Actually I watched the movie some time ago, but it was while I was reading Personal History by Katherine Graham (see above) that I really felt the need to read this book too.  All I can say is 'scary' and we should remember who these people were and what they did.
	Schott's Original Miscellany is the kind of useful book that everyone needs and few people have.  A Christmas gift from Joe's friend Louise, I devoured it Christmas day. Ben Schott has gathered all kinds of lists and definitions in his amazing little book: things like The 12 labours of Hurcules, kinds of Sushi, the Baker Street Irregulars, some medical shorthand, etc.  I heard of his book on Morning Edition on NPR and I think he's going to come out with another.  Go out and buy one!  It's very cool.
	Eats, Shoots and Leaves is the third book I picked up in London and it's all about punctuation.  A hilarious book on punctuation, actually.  I was relieved to know that Joe and I aren't alone in our pickiness, or as she would call it, stickliness -- especially on the mis-use of the apostrophe.  I wouldn't recommend that you check too closely for my correct use of commas, semi-colons and colons.  Still haven't mastered those.  I am much more enamored of the long dash; you can see it sprinkled everywhere on my pages.  So don't tell the author, Lynne Truss, about my mis-use of them!  If you go to her website (click on the book title above), you can play the punctuation game!
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Links:
 

But Wait!.... there's More!  Before I go... a really interesting page is the "Who Reads What Celebrity Reading List" where you can look (by name or by year) to see what book your favorite celebrity (from Captain Kangaroo to Steven Speilberg to Chuck Yeager) recommends and loves.  Other sites that I like for finding an award winning read, a book excerpt, or just a really good book are:

Just Books:	BookPeople: a great site from a great store in Austin.  Central Booking Bookslut Literature Map BookHaven.net Curled Up With A Good Book Washington Post: Books & Reading NPR's 100 Best Characters in Fiction Since 1900
Other Intersting Links:	Banned Books Project Hot Type
Awards:	Burnaby Public Library Awards List The Canterbury Public Library list of Book Prizes & Awards The Giller Prize
Fun:	Seussville TOP